Casearia glomerata f. pubinervis How & Ko; C. merrillii Hayata.

Trees or shrubs, 4-10 m tall; terminal buds densely pubescent, hairs semiappressed, twig tips and young branches puberulous, hairs spreading, older branches glabrous. Stipules ovate, small, ca. 1 mm, adaxially sparsely appressed hairy, ciliate, apex acute, early caducous; petiole 8-12 mm, sparsely puberulous to practically glabrous; leaf blade variable in shape, elliptic, lanceolate, or oblong, less often ovate, 7-12(-17) × 3-5(-6.5) cm, thickly papery, sparsely puberulous when young, soon glabrous on both surfaces, lateral veins 7 or 8 pairs, arching upward, conspicuous on both surfaces, base obtuse or rounded, more rarely acute, often asymmetric, margin serrulate or crenulate to nearly entire, apex acute to obtuse, less often rounded, often contracting gradually or more abruptly to a short acumen to 1 cm. Pedicels 4-5 mm in flower, 7-10 mm in mature fruit, articulate near base, pubescent, hairs semiappressed; bracts broadly ovate or triangular, ca. 1 mm, abaxially semiappressed hairy, or at least with a hairy median band. Flowers 10-15 or more in axillary glomerules, yellowish, small. Sepals 5, broadly elliptic, obovate, or oblong-obovate, 2-3 mm, outside sparsely pubescent except toward margin, hairs semiappressed, inside glabrous or rarely sparsely hairy, margin minutely ciliate to nearly glabrous. Stamens 8-10; filaments 1-2 mm, pubescent; anthers suborbicular, ca. 0.3 mm. Disk lobes oblong, ca. 1/2 as long as anthers, adaxially glabrous, apex densely hairy, hairs white, rather long. Ovary ovoid, glabrous or sparsely hairy; style short, glabrous; stigma capitate. Capsule ca. 1.5 cm, reported as ovoid-subglobose when fresh, bright yellow when ripe, ellipsoid, oblong-ellipsoid, or obovoid when dried, leathery, usually not or only scarcely ridged, 2- or 3-valved, dark reddish or blackish brown, in dried material pericarp conspicuously veined, densely and shallowly warty with few to many ellipsoid inclusions, the latter blackish and shiny in pericarp cross-section. Seeds several, pale brown when dry, ovoid, ca. 5 mm, enveloped by a thin, fleshy, partly fimbriate, pale yellowish aril. Fl. Apr-Dec, fr. Jan-Dec.

"Casearia membranacea f. nigrescens" (S. S. Lai, Bull. Bot. Res., Harbin 14: 229. 1994) belongs here but was not validly published under Art. 37.2 of the Vienna Code because two gatherings were indicated as types (S. Q. Chen [S. H. Chun] 11697 and S. Q. Chen [S. H. Chun] 13372).

For Indian and Chinese material of Casearia glomerata, the combination of hairy terminal bud, pedicel, calyx, and stamen filament, and obovoid fruit with veined, vesicled, unridged pericarp seems to hold, although rarely the stamens are nearly glabrous and the fruit slightly ridged. The species can be difficult to differentiate from C. membranacea, in which the terminal bud is hairy or glabrous, the pedicel, calyx and stamen filaments usually glabrous but sometimes hairy, and the capsule usually strongly ridged and veined but not conspicuously vesicled. Sleumer in The Flacourtiaceae of Thailand (Blumea 30: 217-250. 1985) refers to a widespread "Casearia glomerata Roxburgh complex" that includes C. aequilateralis, C. annamensis (Gagnepain) Lescot & Sleumer, C. membranacea, and C. pseudoglomerata Sleumer. Casearia merrilli, described from Taiwan, is here a new synonym of C. glomerata.

Sparse forests in mountains; low elevations. Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Taiwan, Xizang, Yunnan [Bhutan, India, Nepal, Vietnam].